Christ the King
This coming Sunday is the festival of “Christ the King”. It is a festival, which is meant to remind us that Christ rules over all things. He is the ruler over the whole world. Christ our ascended and exalted King rules over us in glory.
One of the challenges I face in my role at St Peter’s College is to write short sermons which connect with the boys and the staff. This is particularly challenging in the Senior School, because, when the students reach about Year 9 or 10, using phrases like, “Christ our ascended and exalted King rules over us in glory” doesn’t really connect with many of the students.
Fortunately, there is another way of talking about this, which probably connects with all of us more easily these days. We could say that there is an energy behind all life, which is good and pure and kind, an incredibly benevolent presence, which only wants the best for us. Those of us who are religious call this energy “God” or “Christ” or “The Holy Spirit”.
As a way of engaging with this notion, I invite you to think about those times in your life when you have experienced something that is truly beautiful. It may have been a passing moment, something fleeting perhaps, but incredibly beautiful.
I had such an experience a couple of weeks on a Friday morning. I got up early, as I often do on a Friday, to go for a morning bike ride. I emerged out of the house and realised it had rained during the night. On a fine morning, I go straight to the shed and get my bike out, but, last week, I wandered down the drive to check how much water was still on the road and to look at the sky to see if was likely to rain, while I was out on the road. I am unashamedly a fair-weather cyclist! As I walked down the drive, several magpies started calling to each other, and, I think, to me too. They are a family that live on the school grounds and they hang around our place occasionally. For a moment, this family of magpies were singing the most beautiful song. I felt like I had been given a moment of beauty: a sacramental moment, a moment when the beauty of this benevolent, divine presence broke into the world and gave me a glimpse of something truly beautiful.
This benevolent presence invites us to participate in what it is trying to do in the world. There are descriptions of this in the Bible, if you look for them. One is from the book of Proverbs in the Old Testament, in which we have a lovely picture of wisdom, being present with the Creator. Just notice these extraordinary words, written probably close to 3000 years ago: “When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”
This benevolent presence has different names: wisdom, energy, the light that John talks about at the start of his Gospel. As a Christian I happily use the language of the divine, of God, but whatever language makes sense to you, I encourage you to accept the invitation to work with this divine presence. Work with it, because in doing so your life will be so much more extraordinary. Even if I’m wrong about the language of God, there’s a really good chance that I and millions of others around the world are right about the concept. And if there’s a chance that the idea is right, that there is a wisdom, an energy behind all things, then why wouldn’t you want to work with it, not against it? If it’s true that there is a deeper meaning to life than just the material, that there’s something more profound than just what we can see, then why wouldn’t you want to work with it?
I know that in those moments when I’ve tried to work with everything that is good, beautiful and right, that life has gone so much better! It’s when I’ve deliberately worked against everything that is good, that things have gone pair-shaped!
This way of life is the way of humility and sometimes self-sacrifice. The Gospel reading for Christ the King Sunday is quite deliberately chosen. This year it is from St Luke’s Gospel (23: 33–43), when Jesus becomes the exact opposite of what the Romans and his fellow Jews expected a king to be. He is the king on the cross, the humble one who gives everything for others and is crucified for it.
The Romans, in particular, would simply not have understood this as a moment of triumph. There could be glory in death, but such glory would be found on the battlefield: an honourable death, having fought courageously for the glory of Rome. Death by crucifixion, on the other hand, was a shameful death. Even for the Jewish people of the time, although they had more than a passing understanding of the transformative effect of suffering, this was not what they expected their Messiah to be.
Yet, in this moment, in this disgraceful death, Jesus has the strength and the wisdom to be compassionate to another, the 2nd thief, who in the last moments of his own life turns to Christ and asks Jesus to remember him; and Jesus, in this extraordinary moment of love, promises that he would join him in paradise. Even at the last, Jesus is gracious to those around him in need.
So, are you prepared? Are you ready to live a life of self-giving love, of humility and service? The only way I know how to do this, avoiding both false humility and self-serving arrogance, is to have a faith in this benevolent presence, in wisdom, in the wonderfully beautiful energy that is behind all things, and work with it for all that is good. We have a faith that this energy, God, wisdom, the light, will look after us, come what may, and support us through everything. I invite you to commit yourself the way of this ancient religion, because it will bring you strength and courage that you didn’t realise you had.
The Reverend Dr Theo McCall
School Chaplain
